Research Seminar

With speaker Professor Dave Archard from Queen’s University, Belfast

The right to have children seems to be a fundamental human right. Yet philosophers have, especially in recent years, identified a number of puzzles in thinking about such a right. Some of these concern what we owe to future possible persons; others concern what kinds of human beings we ought or should be permitted to create; yet others concern what might be permissible ways to create human beings.

The implications of some philosophical writing in this area runs very much against the grain of ordinary, common sense moral thinking. Philosophers have also had less to say about why there is a right of procreative freedom. Answering this question bears on what we are obligated to do for those who cannot have children.
I want to review some of these questions, suggesting the best answers that can be given to each of them, and to do so with a view to answering a question that philosophers are bad at answering: what is the best and most practicable legal framework for the regulation of procreation.

A short rejoiner will be provided by Professor Michael Hand from the School of Education, University of Birmingham.